Fragile Things

By Jamie Sugai

Although the news story, “Boy trips, punches hole in $1.5 million painting” might not sound like the most hard hitting or intense report when injustices are happening, people are killed or great movements for equality are made, but this made me think. When reading this story, it illustrated a young Taiwanese schoolboy of the age of 12 who was visiting a Leonardo da Vinci themed show in Taipei. The boy had simply tripped and put out his hand to steady himself and instead tore a hole in “Flowers,” by 17th century Italian Baroque artist Paolo Porpora. This particular painting just happens to be worth 1.5 million dollars.

This boy didn’t mean to do anything wrong, he just lost his balance! Like many of us do at one point or another, we lose our balance. All I could think about following this story was how things are so incredibly easy to break. Even when you don’t mean to do, just like the boy, you can so easily break spirits, hearts or everything in between.

I would say in general as human beings, we like to think that we are tough and that nothing can hurt us. But that’s not true. Somebody could just fumble about and end up damaging you or ripping a tear that will take serious repair. No matter what you do to prevent it, we will all go through a hardship at some point in our lives and just like the brilliant art restoration experts in Taipei, you can slowly and gently put all the pieces back where they belong and seal as a whole. There might be a little nick or a scar but that’s something that everyone and everything carries. We can never be perfect people. It’s hard to think of ourselves as such fragile things but it’s the truth. And as always, we will carry on!!